Israel Intensifies Training of Settler Security Teams

Security teams are training in anticipation of possible mass disturbances accompanying the Palestinians’ bid for United Nations recognition in September.

ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has stepped up training for more than 100 settler security teams in the West Bank in anticipation of Palestinian popular protests and possible mass disturbances accompanying any Palestinian bid for United Nations recognition in September, settler leaders said on Tuesday.

The military is drawing up boundaries around each settlement that protesters will not be allowed to cross and is carrying out simulated “scenarios” with the security teams, according to Shlomo Vaknin, the security officer of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ umbrella organization.

It was not clear how the boundaries would be made clear to protesters. Mr. Vaknin refused to go into detail about possible rules of engagement or to describe under what conditions settler response teams might open fire.

There are more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, only some of which are fenced. Each has its own rapid response team armed with military-issued M-16 automatic rifles. There are high levels of hostility — and past clashes — between some Palestinian villages and neighboring settlements and outposts dominated by Jews claiming territory they consider their biblical birthright.

Evoking a recent episode in Cairo in which an Egyptian scaled the building housing Israel’s embassy and supplanted Israel’s flag with Egypt’s, Mr. Vaknin said the teams would not allow “any marchers to enter a community, take down the Israeli flag from the roof of the secretariat and replace it with another one.”

The teams were established in 2000, amid the violence at the outbreak of the second intifada, in recognition of the fact that the army could not be in every place at all times. They are required to step back when soldiers arrive. Settler leaders note that the teams, like much of the Israeli population, are made up mostly of army reservists who receive regular training, and they say the teams know how to restrict their operations to defense.

Palestinian leaders have called for popular protests to support their September bid for United Nations recognition. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has eschewed violent confrontation and wants the protests to stay within the confines of Palestinian cities, away from Israeli checkpoints and settlements. But there is fear on the Israeli side that the situation could spiral out of control.

In what some here saw as a rehearsal for September, thousands of Palestinians and their supporters, some wielding firebombs and stones, tried to breach Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and the frontier between Syria and the disputed Israeli-held Golan Heights in May, with a repeat on the Syrian frontier in June. Israeli forces opened fire in both cases, and as many as 33 protesters were killed. Israel maintains that 10 of the dead were killed by land mines on the Syrian side of the fence.

In the May case, some protesters crossed into the Golan Heights before the Israelis opened fire. In June, the military said it fired before protesters reached the fence, aiming at the legs of those who crossed a new ditch the Israelis considered a red line.

The Israeli military says it now provides its forces with more nonlethal equipment for use in such situations. Despite reports that such weapons, like tear gas and stun grenades, would be distributed to the settler teams, Mr. Vaknin said he believed the military had so far decided not to do so.

The increased training of the settlement security teams, first reported by the newspaper Haaretz on Tuesday, is “only natural in this period,” said Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council.

In response to the Haaretz report, the Israeli military said in a statement that it “maintains an ongoing, professional dialogue with the community leadership and security personnel throughout Judea and Samaria while devoting great efforts to training local forces and preparing them to deal with any possible scenario.” It was referring to the areas of the West Bank by their biblical names.

The military added that it had completed training the majority of the settler teams and that the exercises were ongoing. It declined to go into further detail regarding what it called its “operational preparedness.”